LEAH GARCHIK'S PERSONALS

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, April 17, 1996

THE LITTLE SHOP IN THE NEW MAIN

Read till you drop. Then go shopping. If you love literature, the Friends of the Library want you to put your money where your heart is with a visit to the Library Store on the ground floor of the New Main in San Francisco.

In addition to T-shirts (emblazoned with Thomas Jefferson's words, "I cannot live without books"), mugs and tote bags, the library store sells several books, including Peter Booth Wiley's "A Free Library in This City," and special products created by artists especially for the store. Among them are blank books and cards by letterpress printer Norman Clayton, "Read" necklaces by Carolyn Foresman and Pina Zingaro's "Integrity Journal" steel-covered address book.

A striking portfolio of 27 postcards was created from Ann Hamilton and Ann Chamberlain's "card catalog" project, in which 50,000 old catalog cards were incorporated into the new library's walls. Each card was given to a volunteer who quoted from the referenced work or from other related materials. The finished cards, which form a permanent art installation, feature a polyglot of languages and a kaleidoscope of calligraphy styles, set out on cards referring to a breathtaking range of subjects.

Each of 26 cards in the postcard set reproduces an individual card (the 27th pictures a section of wall); the commentary is legible. A card for Mary Roberts Reinhart's "The Door," for example, makes reference to "Animal Dreams," in which novelist Barbara Kingsolver describes a Pueblo myth "that everybody started out underground. People and animals, everything. And then the badger dug a hole and left everybody out. . . ."

The handsome $15 set is a perfect civic/literary souvenir. But if you just plain went to the library and forgot your pencil and paper, the store will help you remedy that situation with a 60-cent pencil and $2.95 pad, too.

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A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY SOME

Sandra Bernhard, apparently unhappy with the accommodations aboard a cruise ship on which she was performing, "took out her aggressions on her audience," reports New York magazine.

Bernhard is said to have questioned whether Nell Carter, who was on the bill with her, could fit into her cabin, and then berated the audience with such intensity that someone in the crowd threw his drink at her. She left the ship in Mazatlan the night after the performance.

Bernhard told the magazine that she had had a "fabulous time," but her booking agent admitted that her act had been "just a little strong."

FLASH

Princess Diana and the Duchess of York won't be at the royal family's 70th-birthday dinner for Queen Elizabeth, which will be held on Sunday at Windsor Castle. Her Majesty is said to be particularly miffed at Di for delaying divorce proceedings and arguing about such issues as where she will live, her title, access to her sons and, yes of course, money.

-- WHO SAID WHAT

"For example, he quotes one of those unnamed 'friends' as saying, 'He's invited to the Kissingers' -- he doesn't go!' Really? On those occasions when we have been invited by the Kissingers and have been free, of course Margaret and I have gone, with great pleasure. We attended the dinner party at his home for the publication of his book, 'Diplomacy,' and more recently, his 70th-birthday party. The Kissingers also came to my birthday party."

Editor/writer and New York literary bigwig Michael Korda, taking strong objection, in a letter to the editor of Vanity Fair, to Michael Shnayerson's recent profile of him. There was no word on whether the author helped blow out the diplomat's candles.

"For many years, I felt I had lost my identity. I was a foreigner everywhere. When I came back to Cairo and saw childhood friends, it made me realize that I want to spend my last years here. I want an old man's routine, to sit and chat about the past with people who remember."

Omar Sharif, 64, in the Observer, a British weekly in which he has begun writing a bridge column.